


(time is) the fire in which we burn

by pangaeaseas



Category: 19th Century CE RPF, Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally, Historical RPF, Political RPF - Russian 19th c., Russian Royalty RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Doomed Relationship, Fate, Gen, Hemophilia, Magical Realism, Metafiction, Morally Ambiguous Character, Multiple Endings, Non-Linear Narrative, Period Typical Attitudes, Psychic Abilities, Religion, Russian Empire, Russian Orthodoxy (mentioned), psychic dreams, you can read multiple possible endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23739523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pangaeaseas/pseuds/pangaeaseas
Summary: There are ways the story will go, she knows. Her mother lay dying and she knew, the moment when she passed, that she was gone. Before her governess even came and told her, she knew. When she was a baby in a cradle her brother fell from a window, she was not a year old, she felt him bleed to death though her mind could not comprehend it. When they told her about her brother, she knew why her mother cried.Alix of Hesse can see the future.
Relationships: Alix of Hesse | Alexandra Feodorovna/Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov | Nicholas II of Russia
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	(time is) the fire in which we burn

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Delmore Schwartz's poem "Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day" because it got emailed to me! And it fits! And I came up with the title before I decided to write this story!
> 
> This can be read as Anastasia fanfiction, because I saw the musical. It can also be read as Historical RPF, because I did some research. It's kind of open that way. So if you want this to be a prequel to Anastasia the musical with PSYCHICS! Go for it! Otherwise it's pretty depressing!
> 
> Also, the character's views are her own and not my own. This kind of needs to be said.

There are ways the story will go, she knows. Her mother lay dying and she knew, the moment when she passed, that she was gone. Before her governess even came and told her, she knew. When she was a baby in a cradle her brother fell from a window, she was not a year old, she felt him bleed to death though her mind could not comprehend it. When they told her about her brother, she knew why her mother cried.

“It’s an awful way to die, our curse,” she said, and they asked why sweet little Sunny seemed to know all the shadows that hung over them.

And then when Sunny’s storms came over, when her mother died and sister died and she began to believe in God with all her heart, and to fear the appearance of a smile, it was said of her, “what a serious girl.” Perhaps she had the weight of history on her shoulders.

When Alix goes to bed at night she dreams of blood. Blood on sheets. Blood on the walls of a cellar in a place she can’t spell yet. Blood that is hers and blood that she loves and blood that she fears. They say she is a serious girl.

“She never got over losing her mother at such a young age. You know what that does to a child.”

There are ways the story will go.

***

When her sister marries a Russian Grand Duke, she is not very surprised. She is not very surprised when another one sits next to her at the wedding. He is the kind of boy that she might dream of, were she a little older. He is in her dreams anyway.

“I’m Nicky,” he says, and she does not need him to tell her.

And because history is immutable, she says, “I’m Sunny.”

“Yes, I know,” he says. He seems to be trying to charm her. She isn’t sure if she likes it. “What do you like to do?” He is making awkward small talk but he is making history, she knows. She will fall in love with him. She can feel it, waiting within her. It is inside her, and when the storm breaks it will fall off a cliff.

“Would you like some flowers?” he asks, trying to be nice.

“Yes, I would.” They are going to fall in love. They pick flowers together, and he draws out some of her smiles. Before he goes to bed, he writes in his diary about her. She can feel the words as if they were written across her skin.

“Nicky! I’m so very glad to see you,” she says the next day. They walk, and pick flowers, and begin to fall in love. She knows this. God tells her, whispers to her in her sleep. They scratch their names into a window and she feels divine plans moving in the glass.

“This is for you,” he says, shy smile like a river just before spring. He is holding out a brooch. She takes it, wanting to cry.

The next day she gives it back. It is not quite proper of her, to take it. She knows they will fall in love anyway.

***

There are ways in which the story will go. Once, she dreamt of a girl (her daughter, she knows) singing on a bridge in Paris and falling in love. Once she dreamt of the girl’s body being found. She likes the first version better. She wants to believe it. If she follows God, he will reward her, give her the first version. So she will serve his servants, enact his plans. This is the way the story will go.

***

She goes to Russia again, not for good. There are balls and parties and Nicky, laughing, in a sleigh, dancing with her, warm and safe in her arms. He is the boy who will be tsar. There is divinity inside him. When he writes he dreams of marrying her, she smiles for days.

“Why is Sunny smiling?” they ask.

(No one has ever asked her what she dreams of. Sometimes she dreams of love, too. Those are the good ones. Sometimes she dreams she married the king of England. Sometimes she dreams she became a nun.)

***

He comes to Coburg. He proposes. That night she had dreamed of an angry God, lambasting her for casting away the true faith for the whims of her heart.

She prays, talks to her sister. And she learns how God speaks in Russia, through icons and wandering peasant men. She wonders, if he speaks through her.

His father is going to die. She knows this. There are ways the story must go. His father always dies. She is always hated for it. 

“So they can hate me. What does it matter, for God speaks to me?” she does not say.

She will marry after a funeral and at her coronation crowds will stampede and die, she can see it in her dreams. They will call her a curse. So? She is in love. She is happy. She can hardly be parted from his side.

***

“You must have a son,” they tell her. She dreams of a little boy, laughing. (She dreams of the boy dying, but she prays every day and makes sure her husband loses not an inch of the power God gave him.)

“I will. Do not worry,” she says. God loves her. She doesn’t think about her brother who fell from the window, the aches she can hardly remember in her skin.

***

When he bleeds, she does not believe it. And then she dreams of blood, and blood, and blood, and it is his, it is his from her. She dreams of blood for years, and it always stains her. She forgets the dreams where it was her blood too. She holds him tight and pretends the world cannot touch him. She keeps him a secret like some people hide their love.

***

There are ways the story will go. She could have had a son who was hale and hearty and who didn’t make her jump at shadows. She could have had five sons, heirs and spares. When she looks at her youngest daughter, she thinks how, once upon a December, her grandmother will give her a music box. Her heart knows things, too. Anastasia will go to Paris and fall in love. The story will go, and go, and go. She never wonders where she is in this story.

***

There are ways in which the story goes. The war cannot be one of them, it should not be one of them. She puts on a nurse’s cap. The people love her, because she is their tsarina, a gift from God, wife of the man they love. She is not simply some German woman who must be a traitor. She puts on the attitude of a minister, and dreams of a world where her son won’t die if he hurts himself too badly. There will be peace, or if there is not peace they will win.

***

When she was a girl, they believed her to be happy and sweet until her mother died. Then, they say, her smiles turned to frowns, her happiness faded, her shoulders grew to slump. She seemed to be forever dreaming of doom. That is what happens, when a girl loses her mother young. Not even falling in love could save her.

***

She prays. “Let my son live, let him live, let him live! Have I not served you?”

He does not die.

“Am I not your greatest servant? Do I not give you saints and punish sinners? Am I not your instrument on earth? Do you not send my dreams?”

***

She dreams of Anastasia, dancing and singing, happy and alive. She dreams of her in Paris, in love. She dreams of her on a train to France with two con men, fleeing a man who seems to hunt her like prey.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

***

There are ways in which the story goes; the tsar does not give up his throne in any of them except the ones she likes to blink away with waking.

***

Alix has always dreamed of blood and death, and the many ways the future will unfold. She has always known her many fates. She holds them, believes they are the work of God. Nothing can be touched or changed. The story will go, for it must. It must. 

***  
She dies in a cellar. There are ways in which the story goes, she knows, so she will become a saint.

**Author's Note:**

> Any historical errors are my fault. Please comment to correct.


End file.
